Working together to achieve a bright future for media

It’s not only world leaders who have big dreams for the future. I have a dream myself: that one day the media industry will be credited
with being the most innovative industry in the world, and that people
everywhere will continue to rely on the industry as sources of truth,
democracy and inspiration.

Ten years ago when I started thinking about
how this dream could be achieved, I knew
that innovation in newsrooms was seen
mostly from a technological standpoint. How could we use technology to build
stronger infrastructure for the news content
we produced? At that time most of this
thinking was developed by WAN–IFRA and
its contemporaries. Tech companies – telcos,
ISP, social networks – were thought of as
little more than tools for researching and
talking amongst ourselves as an industry.

But the world, even then, was changing
quickly. One day in 2011, while contemplating
the Namban screens from Japan XVII
century, depicting the cultural clash of Portuguese commerce in Asia in a
museum in Lisbon, I had a bit of a revelation.

That shaping the future of media was not
only about selling content, advertising or
looking for the necessary state aid to
survive. Instead, we needed a revolution for
innovation in the product of news itself.

The visionary Canadian professor and
philosopher Marshall McLuhan, whose
unique perspective on media theory has
become gospel, said in 1982 at UNESCO,
“the medium is the message". I could not
agree more – that the future of the news
industry lies not only in innovation, but at
the intersection of news content and the
platforms that deliver them to billions of
readers every day and around the world.

Today’s news media are in an environment of ever–increasing plurality, and in many places the freedom of the press is under threat. But our mission and purpose remains the same. To tell the stories of the world around us – sharing pleasure and sorrow culture and destruction, pain and progress.

For me, accepting the challenge of chairing
the DNI Fund Council, alongside 12 Council
members, is about bringing that vision to life
during a critical time for the media – and the
world. Working together across industries
isn’t just possible, but it’s necessary to help
create a future of innovation in the news
industry in Europe.

So after a year of progress I’m recommitting to the task of the DNI Fund, and together with
Google to inform Europe and the world of the
outcome of so many collaborative projects
across national borders. As the head of the DNI Fund Ludovic Blecher says frequently, we’re encouraged to see innovation grow from
within each EU member state, and now to begin
blurring traditional European borders.

Perhaps one day a project funded by the
DNI and originating in Portugal will form the
basis for how we work as an industry across
all of Europe. Judging by the increasing
collaboration we’re seeing – and those
Namban screens – I would not be surprised.

In closing, I would like to underline how firmly I believe that media companies can transform themselves to compete in a new digital and global world while staying true to the mission, the vision, and the curation that ensures citizens of the world get the information they need. I believe that as an industry we can do this while meeting our readers’ interests, because the content we produce and distribute is not only vibrant pieces of our shared history, but also vehicles of democracy, world peace and global well-being.

Let's go on.

This text by João Palmeiro was first published in DNI Innovation Fund report 2016-2017. Download the full report here to read more about some of our funded projects and key insights.